Wounded ISIS chief al-Baghdadi alive in Syria: Iraqi official

An Iraqi interior ministry official said the Islamic State group’s head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is alive and being treated at a field hospital in Syria after being wounded in an air strike.

“We have irrefutable information and documents from sources within the terrorist organisation that al-Baghdadi is still alive and hiding” in Syria’s northeastern Jazira region, said intelligence and counterterrorism department head Abu Ali al-Basri, quoted Monday in the government daily As-Sabah.

IS retains a significant presence in the desert plains of northeastern Syria’s Hasakeh province despite having lost most of its cross-border “caliphate” which once also covered a third of neighbouring Iraq.

Basri said that Baghdadi was suffering from “injuries, diabetes and fractures to the body and legs that prevent him from walking without assistance”.

The jihadist chief had been wounded in “air raids against IS strongholds in Iraq”.

Iraqi authorities last week published a list of “internationally wanted terrorist leaders” headed by the self-proclaimed IS “caliph”, born in 1971, under the name Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai.

Last June, Russia said it had probably killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a late May air raid near Raqa in Syria, but later said it was still trying to verify his fate.

In September, an American military chief said the jihadist chief was still alive and probably hiding in eastern Syria’s Euphrates Valley.

A 25-year-old British man was found guilty on Thursday of trying to recruit children to carry out attacks in the British capital.

London’s Old Bailey Court heard how Umar Haque was “fascinated by the warped and extreme ideology” of the so-called “Islamic State” (IS) jihadi group. Haque was accused of trying to radicalize children he taught at a mosque and two private Islamic schools.

Despite having no teaching qualifications and being employed as an administrator, Haque used the guise of teaching Islamic studies to indoctrinate children into becoming militants for IS. His tactics included showing the children violent beheading videos and forcing them to re-enact attacks on London, such as Khalid Masood’s attack on Westminster Bridge last year.

“His plan was to create an army of children to assist with multiple terrorist attacks throughout London,” the head of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command, Dean Haydon, said. “He tried and he did, we believe, radicalize vulnerable children from the ages of 11 to 14.”

Prosecutors said Haque had targeted popular landmarks in the British capital, including Big Ben, Heathrow Airport, and the Westfield shopping center in east London.
dm/aw (AP, Reuters)